Accidents\sh@t happens

I was picking up a screw from the bottom of my case and believe it or not it slipped right out of my fingers, ever so perfectly right on top of my sound card. PoP... my speakers popped a little, then the system shut down. I reboot and there's no sound.

Now, 2 different sound cards and 2 sets of speakers later I am without sound and each time I try to install sound drivers my system slows to a crawl. If I uninstalled the drivers then she works just fine..but no sound. with both creative and Phillips drivers. and I do here a crackling in the speakers during different sound events. just a pop sorta right when a sound should start. then nothing. I tried an .mp3 and winamp was even moving slow..like the sound event was using a lot of resources. just no sound.

Look I'm totally lost and if any body has an idea then I'm seriously all ears. I need to know how to properly troubleshoot this. A new motherboard does sound nice though.. damn this sucks,

You may have damaged the PCI slot, try putting a good sound card into a different PCI slot.

Damaged components can react in many ways to being faulty. The most common is dead, but if you just caused something to change value instead of an open or short condition, then this could be the result of that.

I did that already and xp does its thing and installs the drivers , it seems ok but nothing. moboard has integrated sound and I never tried that yet, and I will. The screw shorted something on the back of the sound card, What else could've been damaged. or how should I weed it out. I don't know,,I should try the intigrated sound on my mother board also.. I'll be back

I'd recommend you use an Approved Electronics parts and Contact cleaner for that, but alcohol will work, 90% is the highest concentrate I've found. You can get it at a pharmacy. Acetone is a no no, it can eat some things though it probably won't hurt the CPU.

As for tracing the problem, I'm pretty sure the card is gone to a better place if it made any sparks when the screw hit it. It possibly damaged the PCI slot and maybe even the PCI bus. Do you have any other PCI cards in that machine?

Thanks for responding,
Just a network adapter, and my AGP card. I just installed the latest creative drivers and still nothing. I can hear the speakers come on when I boot up or turn them on and off. I don't know what happened. Somethin got zapped along with that other sound card. and as soon as I decide to keep or change my board or chip I'll use alchahol to clean that chip, thanks. I nEEEEd Help.

Thanks
I got to find out if I need a mother board or not .
since the last post I Reinstalled doirect X Flashed my bios and thought about everything I could possibly think of and I'm all thought out if you know what I mean.

Maybe a long shot but a good idea. without a truly digital sound card there would be no output. if it was set that way/by default. I never thought of that until now. Thanks. It's working now with the VIA - AC97 on board sound. I think it's available on most msi mobo's. I also installed that volcano7+ HS fan, and it made such a difference in my performance, not to mention my temps dropped an average of 15 to 20 degrees. from a steady 55 C to a pretty much constant, 39 and 40 degrees. Every game is running a whole lot faster without the extra sound card. AC97 don't sound to bad either. I guess I should still replace my motherboard. I tried 2 different cards in 2 different pci slots. Only the onboard sound will work.